The senator was shaped by his dreams and ambition, but also by a childhood in which his principal goal had to be simple survival

WAKEFIELD — When Senator Scott Brown was 9 years old, his mother, a sometime cocktail waitress overwhelmed by caring for her two children, sent him to live with her sister for a year. Brown recalls a miserable household of onerous rules and a cousin who mocked him for his absent parents. But nothing was more wretched for him than the hamburger dinners they shared.

Although there were five people at the table, Brown’s aunt generally prepared only nine of the juicy burgers, declaring that Brown’s mother was not giving her enough money to feed him the second helping the others could have. Brown, as he recalls it, was routinely denied the extra hamburger he craved, and “I would always be served last.”